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165-690: The first Greek-speaking people, called Myceneans or Mycenean-Achaeans by historians, entered present-day Greece sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age . Homer refers to " Achaeans " as the dominant tribe during the Trojan War period usually dated to the 12th–11th centuries BC, using Hellenes to describe a relatively small tribe in Thessaly . The Dorians , an important Greek-speaking group, appeared roughly at that time. According to

330-477: A hecatomb , a sacrifice of 100 oxen, if he won Helen, but forgot about it and earned her wrath. Menelaus inherited Tyndareus' throne of Sparta with Helen as his queen when her brothers, Castor and Pollux , became gods, and when Agamemnon married Helen's sister Clytemnestra and took back the throne of Mycenae. Paris, under the guise of a supposed diplomatic mission, went to Sparta to get Helen and bring her back to Troy. Before Helen could look up to see him enter

495-423: A "barbarian" who nevertheless taught the birds how to talk. The term eventually picked up a derogatory use and was extended to indicate the entire lifestyle of foreigners, and finally coming to mean "illiterate" or "uncivilized" in general. Thus "an illiterate man is also a barbarian". According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus , a Hellene differed from a barbarian in four ways: refined language, education, religion, and

660-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

825-406: A better hunter than she. The only way to appease Artemis, he said, was to sacrifice Iphigenia , who was either the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, or of Helen and Theseus entrusted to Clytemnestra when Helen married Menelaus. Agamemnon refused, and the other commanders threatened to make Palamedes commander of the expedition. According to some versions, Agamemnon relented and performed

990-583: A civilization with global proportions, this time open to everybody. Similarly, Hellene evolved from a national name signifying an ethnic Greek to a cultural term signifying anybody who conducted his life according to Greek mores . A wholly different term came to establish itself in the East . The ancient people of the Middle East referred to the Hellenes as Yunan , deriving from Persian Yauna , itself

1155-461: A co-commander, which he was granted. The last commander to arrive was Achilles , who was then 15 years old. Following a sacrifice to Apollo , a snake slithered from the altar to a sparrow's nest in a plane tree nearby. It ate the mother and her nine chicks, then was turned to stone. Calchas interpreted this as a sign that Troy would fall in the tenth year of the war. When the Achaeans left for

1320-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

1485-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

1650-638: A few languages around the world, including Greek: Other forms: The first people speaking an ancient Proto-Greek language entered mainland Greece during the Neolithic period or the Bronze Age . From the Ancient Greek dialects as they presented themselves centuries later, it seems that at least two migrations of Greeks occurred overall, the first of the Ionians and the Aeolians probably in

1815-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

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1980-545: A foul smell; on Odysseus's advice, the Atreidae ordered Philoctetes to stay on Lemnos . Medon took control of Philoctetes's men. While landing on Tenedos, Achilles killed king Tenes , son of Apollo, despite a warning by his mother that if he did so he would be killed himself by Apollo. From Tenedos, Agamemnon sent an embassy to the Priam king of Troy composed of Menelaus and Odysseus, asking for Helen's return. The embassy

2145-629: A loan of Greek Ιωνία ( Ionia ), the western coast of Asia Minor . It is by affiliation with the Ionian tribe the Persians conquered in the late 6th century BC that their name extended to all Hellenes. All peoples under Persian influence adopted the term, and it is from this root that Sanskrit Yavana derives, which one encounters in ancient Sanskrit sources, first attested in Pāṇini's grammar, and later referring, together with Pali Yona , Yonaka to

2310-522: A more political than national meaning, which went hand in hand with the universalizing ideology of Rome that aspired to encompass all nations of the world under one true God. Up until the early 7th century, when the Empire still extended over large areas and many peoples, the use of the name "Roman" always indicated citizenship and never descent. Various ethnicities could apply their own ethnonyms or toponyms to disambiguate citizenship from genealogy, which

2475-499: A pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave." Herodotus , Polybius , Strabo and a large number of other Greek and Roman writers regard the tribes of western Hellas , Epirus, and Macedonia as Hellenic in every respect. Both Thucydides and Demosthenes were themselves of partial non-Attic origins and for Demosthenes it seems of non-Greek origins altogether while notably both of them held strong opposing political positions against Macedonians. In

2640-457: A public threat, which further derogated the meaning of Hellene . Paradoxically, Tribonian , Justinian's own legal commissioner, according to the Suda dictionary, was a Hellene (pagan). The usage of Hellene as a religious term was initially part of an exclusively Christian nomenclature, but some Pagans began to defiantly call themselves Hellenes. Other pagans even preferred the narrow meaning of

2805-683: A purely religious meaning was slow, and complete by approximately the 2nd or 3rd century AD: Athenian statesman Aristeides , in his written Apology to the Emperor Hadrian , picked out the Hellenes as one of the representative pagan peoples of the world along with the Egyptians and the Chaldæans . Later, Clement of Alexandria reports an unknown Christian writer who named all of the above Hellenes and spoke of two old nations and one new:

2970-566: A southern Attic speaker such as Thucydides. Similarly, when the Athenian orator Demosthenes called Philip II of Macedon worse than a barbarian in his Third Philippic , he did so with respect to the culture they demonstrated as foreigners not adhering to proper Hellenic standards, and did not raise the issue of their origin: "not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honors, but

3135-753: A successor of Roman heritage on the grounds that Greeks have nothing to do with the Roman legacy. In 865, Pope Nicholas I wrote to the Emperor Michael III : "You ceased to be called 'Emperor of the Romans' since the Romans, of whom you claim to be Emperor, are in fact according to you barbarians." Henceforth, the emperor in the East was known and referred to in the West as Emperor of the Greeks and their land as Greek Empire , reserving both "Roman" titles for

3300-541: A woman so that he would not have to go to war, but, according to one story, they blew a horn, and Achilles revealed himself by seizing a spear to fight intruders, rather than fleeing. According to another story, they disguised themselves as merchants bearing trinkets and weaponry, and Achilles was marked out from the other women for admiring weaponry instead of clothes and jewellery. Pausanias said that, according to Homer, Achilles did not hide in Skyros, but rather conquered

3465-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

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3630-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

3795-553: Is attributed to the 6th century BC Sicilian poet Stesichorus , while for Homer the Helen in Troy was one and the same. The ship then landed in Sidon . Paris, fearful of getting caught, spent some time there and then sailed to Troy. Paris' abduction of Helen had several precedents. Io was taken from Mycenae, Europa was taken from Phoenicia , Jason took Medea from Colchis , and

3960-641: Is based on Aristotle 's comments in Meteorologica where he places archaic Hellas in Epirus between Dodona and the Achelous river, where in his opinion the great deluge of Deucalion must have occurred. The land was inhabited by Selloi and Graeci, who later came to be known as Hellenes . Homer mentions that the Selloi were the prophets of Zeus at Dodona, but he is referring to Zeus of Dodona as god of

4125-447: Is described as "καλλιγύναικος", kalligýnaikos , "of beautiful women", and its warriors, the Hellenes, along with the feared Myrmidons , were under the command of Achilles . The Parian Chronicle mentions that Phthia was the homeland of the Hellenes and that this name was given to those previously called Greeks ( Γραικοί ). Alcman (7th century BC) also refers that the mothers of Hellenes were Graikoi . In Greek mythology , Hellen ,

4290-596: Is found in Aristotle for the Dorians in Epirus from Graii, a native name of the people of Epirus. He places the seat of these most ancient "Greeks" in the region of the Achelous river around Dodona , where in his opinion the great deluge of Deucalion must have occurred. The priests of Zeus in Dodona were called Selloi, which could lead to Sellanes (like Akarnanes ), and then to Hellanes and Hellenes . Homer

4455-932: Is given by the Bibliotheca that differs somewhat but agrees in numbers. Some scholars have claimed that Homer's catalogue is an original Bronze Age document, possibly the Achaean commander's order of operations. Others believe it was a fabrication of Homer. The second book of the Iliad also lists the Trojan allies , consisting of the Trojans themselves, led by Hector, and various allies listed as Dardanians led by Aeneas, Zeleians , Adrasteians , Percotians , Pelasgians , Thracians , Ciconian spearmen, Paionian archers, Halizones , Mysians, Phrygians , Maeonians , Miletians , Lycians led by Sarpedon and Carians . Nothing

4620-647: Is known from a summary included in Proclus ' Chrestomathy . The authorship of the Cyclic Epics is uncertain. It is generally thought that the poems were written down in the 7th and 6th century BC , after the composition of the Homeric poems, though it is widely believed that they were based on earlier traditions. Both the Homeric epics and the Epic Cycle take origin from oral tradition . Even after

4785-466: Is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki ,

4950-535: Is no evidence that the newcomers established a different civilization. The destruction was followed by the Greek Dark Ages with very poor archaeological findings, when most occupied areas were deserted, but some areas like Attica occupied by the Ionians remained untouched by the invaders. Several Greek tribes moved to regions of Greece where they acquired different names, and population groups moved through

5115-503: Is now accepted by most scholars. The historicity of the Trojan War remains an open question. Many scholars believe that there is a historical core to the tale, though this may simply mean that the Homeric stories are a fusion of various tales of sieges and expeditions by Mycenaean Greeks during the Bronze Age . Those who believe that the stories of the Trojan War are derived from a specific historical conflict usually date it to

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5280-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

5445-533: Is referring to Hellenes as a relatively small tribe in Phthia in central Greece ( Achaea Pthiotis ). In the Parian Chronicle it is mentioned that Phthia was the homeland of Hellenes and that this name was given to those previously called Graikoi ( Γραικοί ). In Greek mythology , Hellen , the patriarch of Hellenes, was son of Deucalion (who ruled around Phthia) and Pyrrha , the only survivors after

5610-477: Is said of the Trojan language ; the Carians are specifically said to be barbarian-speaking , and the allied contingents are said to have spoken many languages, requiring orders to be translated by their individual commanders. The Trojans and Achaeans in the Iliad share the same religion, same culture and the enemy heroes speak to each other in the same language, though this could be dramatic effect. Philoctetes

5775-817: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Trojan War On

5940-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

6105-464: Is used in a religious sense for the first time in the New Testament . In Mark 7 :26, a woman arrives before Jesus , and kneeling before him: "The woman was a Hellene, a Syrophœnician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter." Since the nationality or ethnicity of the woman is stated to be Syrophœnician, "Greek" (translated as such into the English of

6270-466: Is usually credited as Zeus' daughter, and sometimes Nemesis is credited as her mother. Helen had scores of suitors , and her father was unwilling to choose one for fear the others would retaliate violently. Finally, one of the suitors, Odysseus of Ithaca, proposed a plan to solve the dilemma. In exchange for Tyndareus' support of his own suit towards Penelope , he suggested that Tyndareus require all of Helen's suitors to promise that they would defend

6435-499: Is why the historian Procopius prefers to call the Byzantines as Hellenized Romans , while other authors use Romhellenes and Graecoromans , aiming to indicate descent and citizenship simultaneously. The Lombard and Arab invasions in the same century resulted in the loss of most of the provinces including Italy and all of the Middle East, save for Anatolia . The areas that did remain were mostly Greek-speaking, thereby turning

6600-471: The 12th or 11th century BC , often preferring the dates given by Eratosthenes , 1194–1184 BC, which roughly correspond to archaeological evidence of a catastrophic burning of Troy VII , and the Late Bronze Age collapse . The events of the Trojan War are found in many works of Greek literature and depicted in numerous works of Greek art . There is no single, authoritative text which tells

6765-674: The Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from

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6930-624: The Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are

7095-454: The Caucasus , that, like his father Cronus, he would be overthrown by one of his sons. Another prophecy stated that a son of the sea-nymph Thetis, with whom Zeus fell in love after gazing upon her in the oceans off the Greek coast, would become greater than his father. For one or both of these reasons, either upon Zeus' orders or because she wished to please Hera, who had raised her, Thetis

7260-627: The Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of

7425-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

7590-620: The Greco-Persian Wars , an inscription was written in Delphi celebrating victory over the Persians and calling Pausanias the leading general of the Hellenes. Awareness of a Pan-Hellenic unity was promoted by religious festivals, most significantly in the Eleusinian Mysteries , in which prospective initiates had to speak Greek , and almost as importantly through participation in the four Panhellenic Games , including

7755-561: The Iliad (Books II – XXIII) describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus , one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems , which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid . The ancient Greeks believed that Troy

7920-633: The Indo-Greeks . The term Yunan is used in current Persian , Arabic ( يوناني ), Azeri , Turkish , Hindi (यूनान), Indonesian and Malay . The related Hebrew name, Yavan or Javan ( יָוָן ), was used to refer to the Greek nation in the Eastern Mediterranean in early Biblical times. There was an eponymous character Javan mentioned in Genesis 10:2. In later times it was used for all Hellenistic kingdoms (for example,

8085-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

8250-545: The King James Version , but as haiþno " heathen " in Ulfilas 's Gothic ; Wycliffe and Coverdale likewise have heathen ) must therefore signify her polytheistic religion. Nevertheless, it is important to mention that phrases in koine Greek similar to the one in Mark 7:26 ("ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἦν Ἑλληνίς, Συροφοινίκισσα τῷ γένει·") can be found in the new testament being applied to Jewish people ( Acts 18 :2 "καὶ εὑρών τινα Ἰουδαῖον ὀνόματι Ἀκύλαν, Ποντικὸν τῷ γένει,")(Acts 18:24 "Ἰουδαῖος δέ τις Ἀπολλὼς ὀνόματι, Ἀλεξανδρεὺς τῷ γένει,") and

8415-433: The Maccabeans applied it to their Seleucid foes). "Yavan" is still the name used for modern Greece in contemporary Israel . Although the contemporary Chinese term for Greece (希臘 Xīlà ) is based on Hellas , Chinese previously used what was likely a version of the Yunan or Yona root when referring to the Dàyuān (大宛). The Dàyuān were probably the descendants of the Greek colonies that were established by Alexander

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8580-437: The Macedonians were a Dorian tribe that stayed behind in Macedonia when the main Dorian tribes moved to the south. Late Bronze Age Hittite texts mention a nation called Ahhiya and subsequently Ahhiyawa which have been identified in scholarship as part of the Mycenaean world. Egyptian records mention peoples known as Ekwesh , Denyen and Tanaju that have been also linked to the Mycenaean world. In Homer 's Iliad ,

8745-403: The Pelasgians who belonged to a Pre- Dorian population. It is possible that the extension of a particular cult of Zeus in Dodona (a tendency among the Greeks to form ever-larger cultic communities or amphictionies ) caused the name to further extend to the rest of the peninsula. This theory connects the name Hellenes with the Dorians (and the substrate of Pelasgians) who occupied Epirus in

8910-424: The Peloponnese , the Dodecanese islands, Crete, and Ithaca, comprising 1186 pentekonters , ships with 50 rowers. Thucydides says that according to tradition there were about 1200 ships, and that the Boeotian ships had 120 men, while Philoctetes ' ships only had the fifty rowers, these probably being maximum and minimum. These numbers would mean a total force of 70,000 to 130,000 men. Another catalogue of ships

9075-489: The Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of

9240-442: The Styx , the river that runs to the underworld , making him invulnerable wherever he was touched by the water. Because she had held him by the heel, it was not entirely immersed during the bathing and thus the heel remained mortal and vulnerable to injury (hence the expression " Achilles' heel " for an isolated weakness). He grew up to be the greatest of all mortal warriors. After Calchas' prophecy, Thetis hid Achilles in Skyros at

9405-447: The democratic or oligarchic polis (city state) of the south–also contributed to this view of them as "barbaric". Thucydides calls the Acarnanians , Aetolians , Epirotes and Upper Macedonians barbarians , but does so in a strictly linguistic sense – these peoples were considered barbarophone to the extent that their dialects of Greek were sufficiently different and archaic so as to sound crude and barely understandable to

9570-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

9735-494: The "Roman" title by styling himself as Holy Roman Emperor . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of

9900-448: The 19th century BC and the second of the Dorians probably in the 13th century BC. The first migration resulted in Mycenean Greek , an archaic Greek language which appears in Linear B syllabic inscriptions and the second resulted in the Dorian dialect which displaced the Arcadocypriot dialect that seems to be closest to the Mycenean Greek. The tribes later called Aeolians and Ionians established several feudal kingdoms around Greece, and

10065-422: The Boeotian forces in the Iliad 's Catalogue of Ships , provides the first known reference to a region named Graea , and Pausanias mentions that the ancient city of Tanagra was for a time called Graea, adding that "no one knows where this Graia really was; Aristotle thought it was near Oropus , further east on the same coast as Delion ." Busolt claimed that the name was given by the Romans originally to

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10230-509: The Christian nation. Several books written at this time demonstrate clearly the semantic shift. For example, Athanasius ' Against Hellenes was originally titled Against the Gentiles (Greek: ethnikoi ) according to older manuscripts. From then on, Hellene no longer meant an ethnic Greek or an adherent to Greek culture, but pagans in general, regardless of race. Emperor Julian 's attempt to restore paganism failed, and according to Pope Gregory I , "matters moved in favor of Christianity and

10395-477: The Dorians (Δωριείς) of Sparta , the Ionians (Ἴωνες) of Athens , the Phthian Achaeans (Ἀχαιοί), the Locrians (Λοκροί) ( Opuntians , Ὀπούντιοι and Ozolians , Ὀζολαί), the Magnesians (Μάγνητες), the Malians (Μαλιεῖς), the Perrhaebians (Περραιβοί), the Phocians (Φωκεῖς), the Pythians (Πύθιοι) of Delphi, and the Thessalians (Θεσσαλοί). Among the descendants of Hellen are mentioned Aeolus , Ion , Achaeus , Dorus , Graecos and Makedon . It seems that

10560-410: The Earth. The adjective derived from the name, Ogygios (Ὠγύγιος "Ogygian") came to mean "primeval, primal," or "from earliest days" and also "gigantic". Homer refers to Hellenes as an originally relatively small tribe settled in Thessalic Phthia . During the era of the Trojan War they were centered along the settlements of Alos , Alope , Trachis , and the Pelasgian Argos. This Homeric Hellas

10725-496: The Frankish king. The interests of both sides were nominal rather than actual. No land areas were ever claimed, but the insult the Byzantines took on the accusation demonstrates how close at heart the Roman name (Ῥωμαῖος) had become to them. In fact, Bishop Liutprand of Cremona , a delegate of the Frankish court, was briefly imprisoned in Constantinople for not referring to the Roman emperor, Nikephoros II Phokas , by his appropriate title, and in reprisal for his king, Otto I , claiming

10890-403: The Great and prospered within the Hellenistic realm of the Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians , until they were isolated by the migrations of the Yueh-Chih around 160 BC. It has been suggested that the name Yuan was simply a transliteration of the words Yunan , Yona , or Ionians, so that Dàyuān (literally "Great Yuan") would mean "Great Yunans" or "Great Ionians." The name Hellene was given

11055-472: The Greek allied forces are described under three different names ; Achaeans (Ἀχαιοί, Akhaioí , used 598 times), Danaans (Δαναοί, Danaoí , used 138 times) and Argives (Ἀργεῖοι, Argeîoi , used 29 times). All of the aforementioned terms were used synonymously to denote a common Greek identity. A fourth term – "Panhellenes" – ( Πανέλληνες "All of the Greeks") and "Hellenes'" ( / ˈ h ɛ l iː n z / ; Ἕλληνες ) – both appear only once ; implying it

11220-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

11385-499: The Greek colonists from Graea who helped to found Cumae the important city in southern Italy where the Italic peoples first encountered the Greeks and then to all Greeks. According to Irad Malkin, Graikoi could have also been an exonym for the Greeks, used by neighboring Illyrians and Messapians . It has been suggested that the name Graeci was possibly an Illyrian name for a Greek tribe with whom they were in contact in north Epirus . N. G. L. Hammond has pointed out that

11550-442: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

11715-492: The Greek side: On the Trojan side: The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 12th or 13th century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans ( Greeks ) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus , king of Sparta . The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature , most notably Homer 's Iliad . The core of

11880-828: The Greek soldiers (etc) that Alexander the Great was first the hegemon of, is being used by – at least – contemporary sources when referring to the Hellenistic period , as the ancient Macedonian army , including the famous somatophylakes (e. g. Lysimachus ) and, later, the diadochi of Alexander, consisted of warriors from numerous and diverse Greek tribes . Thus, as the Spartans (Lacedaemonians) did not take part in Alexander's campaign, Alexander once ordered for an inscription to be sent, along with some war spoils, to Athens saying "Alexander, son of Philip, and all

12045-679: The Greek tradition, the Graeci (Latin; Ancient Greek: Γραικοί , Graikoi , "Greeks") were renamed Hellenes probably with the establishment of the Great Amphictyonic League after the Trojan War. When the Romans first encountered Greek colonists in Southern Italy , they used the name Graeci for the colonists and then for all Greeks; this became the root of all relevant terms in European languages. The Persians used

12210-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

12375-511: The Greek world enhanced the prestige of the religious institutions that remained intact. Early Christians differentiated people according to religion, so the sense of the word Hellene as a cultural attribute became marginalized and then supplanted by its religious element. Eventually, Christians came to refer to all pagans as Hellenes . St. Paul in his Epistles uses Hellene almost always juxtaposed to Hebrew , and in disregard of all other ethnicities (Romans, Syrians, Egyptians, etc.) living in

12540-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

12705-591: The Greeks except the Lacedaemonians [...]". Likewise, the term "Macedonian", while referring here to Greek dialects, also ended up meaning the Koine Greek in classical sources, whereas diverse major Ancient Greek dialects were natively spoken in the later/expanded Macedonian Kingdom , and even though the Koine dialect was mostly based on Attic Greek that was natively spoken around Athens . Notably, during

12870-467: The Greeks referred to themselves as Graikoi ( Γραικοί , "Greeks") and Rhomaioi / Romioi ( Ῥωμαῖοι / Ῥωμηοί / Ρωμιοί , "Romans") the latter of which was used since virtually all Greeks were Roman citizens after 212 AD. The term Hellene started to be applied to the followers of the polytheistic (" pagan ") religion after the establishment of Christianity by Theodosius I . Most European languages, as well as other languages that have borrowed

13035-564: The Levite Barnabas ( Acts 4 :36, "Λευΐτης, Κύπριος τῷ γένει"). In all those cases the terms Hellene/Jew/Levite are mentioned, eventually followed by a comma, a designation such as Syrophoenician/Pontic/Alexandrian/Cypriot and after that the words "τῷ γένει", with the last words tending to have differing translations. A broadly similar terminology is found in John 12 :20–23: "And there were certain Hellenes among them that came up to worship at

13200-507: The Olympic Games, in which participants were exclusively Greek and recognized by tribal affiliation. The development of mythological genealogies of descent from eponymous founder-figures, long after the actual southward migration of the four tribal groups recognized by the Greeks, affected how the identity of northern tribes was perceived. According to the most prevailing legend, Hellen , son of Deucalion and Pyrrha , received from

13365-469: The Trojan War circulated. In later ages playwrights , historians , and other intellectuals would create works inspired by the Trojan War. The three great tragedians of Athens , Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , wrote a number of dramas that portray episodes from the Trojan War. Among Roman writers the most important is the 1st century BC poet Virgil; in Book 2 of his Aeneid , Aeneas narrates

13530-527: The Trojan princess Hesione had been taken by Heracles, who gave her to Telamon of Salamis . According to Herodotus , Paris was emboldened by these examples to steal himself a wife from Greece, and expected no retribution, since there had been none in the other cases. According to Homer, Menelaus and his ally, Odysseus, travelled to Troy, where they unsuccessfully sought to recover Helen by diplomatic means. Menelaus then asked Agamemnon to help him enforce

13695-548: The Trojans Hector and Paris, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse . The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans, except for some of the women and children whom they kept or sold as slaves and desecrated the temples, thus earning the gods' wrath. Few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, Aphrodite's son and one of

13860-489: The Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to Italy . The following summary of the Trojan War follows the order of events as given in Proclus' summary, along with the Iliad , Odyssey , and Aeneid , supplemented with details drawn from other authors. According to Greek mythology, Zeus had become king of the gods by overthrowing his father Cronus ; Cronus in turn had overthrown his father Uranus . Zeus

14025-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

14190-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

14355-527: The apple. They submitted the judgment to a shepherd they encountered tending his flock. Each of the goddesses promised the young man a boon in return for his favour: power, wisdom, or love. The youth—in fact Paris, a Trojan prince who had been raised in the countryside—chose love, and awarded the apple to Aphrodite. As his reward, Aphrodite caused Helen, the Queen of Sparta, and most beautiful of all women, to fall in love with Paris. The judgement of Paris earned him

14520-414: The area at the time. A possible exception to this being Colossians 3 :11 ("Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." King James Version ). The aim was probably to represent the aggregate of the polytheistic and the monotheistic religious communities, who respectively believed in many gods or one god. Hellene

14685-645: The classicizing term Ausones to refer to the people of the Eastern Roman Empire, although, as John Tzetzes points out (in his Scholia to Lycophron 's "Alexandra" , attributed to himself and his brother Isaac), that should be understood in its proper context as a literary device. Overall, the word Rhomaios came to represent the Hellenized inhabitants of the East Roman Empire. Overall, the foreign borrowed name (Romans) initially had

14850-408: The composition of the Iliad , Odyssey , and the Cyclic Epics, the myths of the Trojan War were passed on orally in many genres of poetry and through non-poetic storytelling. Events and details of the story that are only found in later authors may have been passed on through oral tradition and could be as old as the Homeric poems. Visual art, such as vase painting , was another medium in which myths of

15015-513: The court of King Lycomedes , where he was disguised as a girl. At a crucial point in the war, she assists her son by providing weapons divinely forged by Hephaestus (see below ). The most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, one of the daughters of Tyndareus , King of Sparta. Her mother was Leda , who had been either raped or seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan. Accounts differ over which of Leda's four children, two pairs of twins, were fathered by Zeus and which by Tyndareus. However, Helen

15180-403: The downfall of Troy. After bathing in the spring of Ida, the goddesses appeared to him naked, either for the sake of winning or at Paris' request. Paris was unable to decide among them, so the goddesses resorted to bribes. Athena offered Paris wisdom, skill in battle, and the abilities of the greatest warriors; Hera offered him political power and control of all of Asia ; and Aphrodite offered him

15345-535: The emperor. The name Hellene meaning "pagan" has persisted into modern times. Many groups advocating a revival or reconstruction of the worship of the Olympian Gods call themselves Hellenic Polytheists and the religion Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism or Hellenismos . Such groups outside of Greece are careful not to imply that, by calling themselves Hellenes , they consider themselves Greek nationals. The name "Macedonians", in order to colloquially mean

15510-667: The empire into a much more cohesive unit that eventually developed a fairly self-conscious Greek identity. The Byzantines' failure to protect the Pope from the Lombards forced the Pope to search for help elsewhere. The man who answered his call was Pepin II of Aquitaine , whom he had named "Patrician", a title that caused a serious conflict. In 772, Rome ceased commemorating the emperor that first ruled from Constantinople , and in 800 Charlemagne

15675-469: The entire events of the war. Instead, the story is assembled from a variety of sources, some of which report contradictory versions of the events. The most important literary sources are the two epic poems traditionally credited to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey , composed sometime between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Each poem narrates only a part of the war. The Iliad covers a short period in

15840-529: The extreme north of Greece, rendering uncertain the relation with the name Graeci used by the Romans . Some toponyms, especially an ancient city Hellas in southern Thessaly , and the Greek tradition seem to indicate that the name Hellenes was Pre-Dorian itself and that the homeland of the Graikoi , who were later called Hellenes , was in central Greece . A Greek myth mentions an earlier deluge of Ogyges in

16005-424: The fairest"). The apple was claimed by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They quarrelled bitterly over it, and none of the other gods would venture an opinion favouring one, for fear of earning the enmity of the other two. Eventually, Zeus ordered Hermes to lead the three goddesses to Paris, a prince of Troy, who, unaware of his ancestry, was being raised as a shepherd on Mount Ida , because of a prophecy that he would be

16170-528: The feast ... Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified". This could have one of two interpretations: either that Jesus meant that the time had come for his religion to spread to the pagans (in which case the term "Hellenes" is religious), or that it would spread by using the Greek language (in which case the term "Hellenes" is meant to be linguistic). The development towards

16335-596: The first time in an inscription by Echembrotus , dedicated to Heracles for his victory in the Amphictyonic Games, and refers to the 48th Olympiad (584 BC). Simonides of Ceos in his epigram on the tomb of the Athenians who were killed in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) wrote "Ἑλλήνων προμαχοῦντες Ἀθηναῖοι Μαραθῶνι […]" "Fighting at the forefront of the Hellenes, the Athenians at Marathon […]" and after

16500-442: The following centuries, Hellene typically contrasted with barbarian , representing the uncivilized. The Greek tribes quickly noticed that they did not speak the same tongue as their neighbors, and used the term "βάρβαρος" ("barbarian") for them, with the meanings "uncultured", "uncivilized" or "speaker of a foreign language". The term βάρβαρος is thought to be onomatopoeic in origin: "bar-bar"—i.e. stammering —may have been how

16665-415: The great deluge. Hesiod is referring to Graecus , son of Pandora , who was sister of Hellen . Alcman mentions that the mothers of Hellenes were Graikoi . The German classical historian Georg Busolt (1850–1920) derives the name from Graikos , "inhabitant of Graea , a town on the coast of Boeotia. The name Graea (γραῖα) is derived from Proto-Greek grau-j- , "old lady". Homer , while reciting

16830-628: The historians called them Myceneans after their most powerful kingdom Mycenea in Peloponnese , or Myceneans - Achaeans because in Homer the Achaeans were the dominating tribe in Greece and the name Achiyawa that appears in Hittite texts seems to correspond to a thalassocratic country which might be Mycenea . Although Homer referred to a union of the Greek kingdoms under the leadership of

16995-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

17160-713: The inhabitants of the city of Rome in Italy, but with the increasing grants of Roman citizenship to the Greeks and other nations of the Roman Empire, it soon lost its connection with the Latins . This process culminated in 212 AD, when Emperor Caracalla's Constitutio Antoniniana granted the citizenship to all free-born men of the Empire. Later Byzantine authors such as Nikephoros Basilakes, Michael Attaleiates , Theodore Prodromos , Patriarch Germanus II , Niketas Choniates and Nicaean Emperor Theodore II Laskaris also used

17325-591: The interior of Asia Minor. Reinforcements continued to come until the very end. The Achaeans controlled only the entrance to the Dardanelles, and Troy and her allies controlled the shortest point at Abydos and Sestos and communicated with allies in Europe. Achilles and Ajax were the most active of the Achaeans, leading separate armies to raid lands of Trojan allies. According to Homer, Achilles conquered 11 cities and 12 islands. According to Apollodorus, he raided

17490-558: The ire of both Hera and Athena, and when Helen left her husband, Menelaus, the Spartan king, for Paris of Troy, Menelaus called upon all the kings and princes of Greece to wage war upon Troy. Menelaus' brother Agamemnon , king of Mycenae , led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris' insult. After the deaths of many heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax , and

17655-516: The island, as part of the Trojan War. The Achaean forces first gathered at Aulis . All the suitors sent their forces except King Cinyras of Cyprus. Though he sent breastplates to Agamemnon and promised to send 50 ships, he sent only one real ship, led by the son of Mygdalion, and 49 ships made of clay. Idomeneus was willing to lead the Cretan contingent in Mycenae's war against Troy, but only as

17820-550: The islands to the western coasts of Asia Minor where they kept their native names Aeolians , Ionians and Dorians . It seems that the myth of Hellen , the progenitor of the Hellenes , was invented when the Greek tribes started to separate from each other, and stressed their common origin. The name "Hellenes" was probably used by the Greeks with the establishment of the Great Amphictyonic League, an ancient association of Greek tribes. According to legend it

17985-646: The king of Mycenae during the Trojan War , there is no evidence that these kingdoms were dominated by a central power. Most of the Mycenaean palaces were destroyed at the end of the 13th century BC. The Greek tradition relates this destruction to the Dorians, but it is suggested that the Dorian invasion was only one of the causes of the Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean , as there

18150-642: The last year of the siege of Troy, while the Odyssey concerns Odysseus's return to his home island of Ithaca following the sack of Troy and contains several flashbacks to particular episodes in the war. Other parts of the Trojan War were told in the poems of the Epic Cycle , also known as the Cyclic Epics: the Cypria , Aethiopis , Little Iliad , Iliou Persis , Nostoi , and Telegony . Though these poems survive only in fragments, their content

18315-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

18480-430: The love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite, and, after several adventures, returned to Troy, where he was recognised by his royal family. Peleus and Thetis bore a son, whom they named Achilles. It was foretold that he would either die of old age after an uneventful life, or die young in a battlefield and gain immortality through poetry. Furthermore, when Achilles

18645-399: The main narrative, and therefore as likely to be "early and integral". Eight years after the storm had scattered them, the fleet of more than a thousand ships was gathered again. When they had all reached Aulis, the winds ceased. The prophet Calchas stated that the goddess Artemis was punishing Agamemnon for killing either a sacred deer or a deer in a sacred grove, and boasting that he was

18810-412: The marriage of Helen, regardless of whom he chose. The suitors duly swore the required oath on the severed pieces of a horse, although not without a certain amount of grumbling. Tyndareus chose Menelaus. Menelaus was a political choice on her father's part. He had wealth and power. He had humbly not petitioned for her himself, but instead sent his brother Agamemnon on his behalf. He had promised Aphrodite

18975-407: The meaning "pagan" by the early Christian church, and retained that meaning until the end of the millennium. It is believed that contact with Christian Jews led some Christians to use Hellene as a means of religious differentiation. Jews, like Greeks , distinguished themselves from foreigners, but unlike Greeks, did so according to religious rather than cultural standards. Roman domination of

19140-524: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

19305-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

19470-693: The name Yaunas ( Yunans ) after the Ionians , a Greek tribe who colonized part of the coasts of western Asia Minor. The term was used later in Hebrew ( Yevanim , יוונים ‎), Arabic , and also by the Turks . The word entered the languages of the Indian subcontinent as the Yona . A unique form is used in Georgian , where the Greeks are called Berdzeni (ბერძენი). By Late Antiquity (c. 3rd–7th centuries),

19635-468: The name from one of them, use names for Greece that come from the Latin Graecia and Graecus , the name the Romans used for the Greeks, itself from the Greek Γραικός : In languages of Middle East and South and Central Asia, the common root is "yun" or "ywn". It is borrowed from the Greek name Ionia , a once Greek region of Asia Minor, and the Ionians : The third form is "Hellas", used by

19800-515: The names Graeci and Hellenes spread from contact with small tribes or with Graia, a defunct Greek polis in the Gulf of Euboea. According to Rene Olivier, in the French language the word grec ("Greek") is sometimes also used as an ethnic slur meaning "fraudster" (in contrast with hellénique which has no negative connotations). Hellenes in the wider meaning of the word appears in writing for

19965-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

20130-571: The nymph Orseis three sons, Aeolus , Dorus , and Xuthus , each of whom founded a primary tribe of Hellas–the Aeolians , Dorians , Achaeans and Ionians . At the time of the Trojan War, the Epirotes ( Molossians , Thesprotians and Chaonians ) were not considered Hellenes, for the people so named were then limited to a small tribe in Thessaly of which Achilles was a member. After the name

20295-479: The oath of Helen's suitors, which was to defend her marriage, regardless of which suitor was chosen. Agamemnon agreed, and sent emissaries to all the Achaean kings and princes to call them to observe their oath and retrieve Helen. Since Menelaus's wedding, Odysseus had married Penelope and fathered a son, Telemachus . In order to avoid the war, he feigned madness and sowed his fields with salt. Palamedes outwitted him by placing Telemachus, then an infant, in front of

20460-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

20625-423: The other for slavery . Aristotle came to the conclusion that "the nature of a barbarian and a slave is one and the same". Alexander the Great 's conquests consolidated Greek influence in the East by exporting Greek culture into Asia and permanently transformed education and society in the region. Isocrates declared in his speech Panegyricus , speaking about Athens and Greece: "And so far has our city distanced

20790-515: The palace, she was shot with an arrow from Eros , otherwise known as Cupid , and fell in love with Paris when she saw him, as promised by Aphrodite. Menelaus had left for Crete to bury his uncle, Crateus. According to one account, Hera, still jealous over the judgement of Paris, sent a storm. The storm caused the lovers to land in Egypt, where the gods replaced Helen with a likeness of her made of clouds, Nephele . The myth of Helen being switched

20955-407: The patriarch of Hellenes, was son of Deucalion , who ruled around Phthia with Pyrrha , the only survivors after the great deluge. It seems that the myth was invented when the Greek tribes started to separate from each other in certain areas of Greece and it indicates their common origin. The name Hellenes was probably used by the Greeks with the establishment of the Great Amphictyonic League . This

21120-526: The plough's path. Odysseus turned aside, unwilling to kill his son, so revealing his sanity and forcing him to join the war. According to Homer, however, Odysseus supported the military adventure from the beginning, and travelled the region with Pylos ' king, Nestor , to recruit forces. At Skyros, Achilles had an affair with the king's daughter Deidamia , resulting in a child, Neoptolemus . Odysseus, Telamonian Ajax, and Achilles' tutor Phoenix went to retrieve Achilles. Achilles' mother disguised him as

21285-628: The position of the Hellenes was severely aggravated". Half a century later Christians protested against the Eparch of Alexandria , whom they accused of being a Hellene. Theodosius I initiated the first legal steps against paganism, but it was Justinian's legal reforms that triggered pagan persecutions on a massive scale. The Corpus Juris Civilis contained two statutes which decreed the total destruction of Hellenism , even in civic life, and were zealously enforced even against men in high position. The official suppression of paganism made non-Christians

21450-604: The predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation

21615-481: The region of Boeotia which was occupied by the Minyans a group of autochthonous or Proto-Greek speaking people. The region (situated next to Attica ) was called Graïke in ancient times probably after the old city of Graea (Γραῖα Graîa , from Proto-Greek grau-j- , "old lady") on the coast. The name Ogyges (or Ogenos ) is related with Okeanos (Ὠκεανός), the great river-ocean that Greeks believed to surround

21780-574: The reign of Constantine the Great , who is regarded as the first Byzantine Emperor , the Diocese of Macedonia was established, comprising principally the area that is modern Greece , with Thessalonica as its capital. Romans or Rhomaioi (Ῥωμαῖοι; sg. Ῥωμαῖος Rhomaios ) and Romioi (Ρωμιοί; sg. Ρωμιός Romios ), is the name by which the Greeks were known in the Middle Ages and during Ottoman rule . The name in antiquity originally signified

21945-439: The rest of mankind in thought and in speech that her pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name Hellenes suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and that the title Hellenes is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood". With a small reformation, the Hellenistic civilization is the evolution of classical Greek civilization into

22110-464: The rule of law. Greek education became identified with noble upbringing. Paul of Tarsus considered it his obligation to preach the Gospel to all men, "Hellenes and barbarians, both wise and foolish". Discrimination between Hellenes and barbarians lasted until the 4th century BC. Euripides thought it plausible that Hellenes should rule over barbarians, because the first were destined for freedom and

22275-407: The sack of Troy. Traditionally, the Trojan War arose from a sequence of events beginning with a quarrel between the goddesses Hera , Athena , and Aphrodite . Eris , the goddess of discord, was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis , and so arrived bearing a gift: a golden apple , inscribed "for the fairest". Each of the goddesses claimed to be the "fairest", and the rightful owner of

22440-482: The sacrifice, but others claim that he sacrificed a deer in her place, or that at the last moment, Artemis took pity on the girl, and took her to be a maiden in one of her temples, substituting a lamb. Hesiod says that Iphigenia became the goddess Hecate . The Achaean forces are described in detail in the Catalogue of Ships , in the second book of the Iliad . They consisted of 28 contingents from mainland Greece,

22605-584: The speech of foreign peoples sounded to Greek-speakers. This was also the case for the Egyptians , who, according to Herodotus , "named barbarians all those who spoke a different tongue", and in later years for the Slavs , who gave the Germans the name němec , which means "mute", while calling themselves slověnski or "people of the word". In his play The Birds , Aristophanes calls the illiterate supervisor

22770-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

22935-447: The various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

23100-529: The vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between

23265-476: The war is the least developed among surviving sources, which prefer to talk about events in the last year of the war. After the initial landing the army was gathered in its entirety again only in the tenth year. Thucydides deduces that this was due to lack of money. They raided the Trojan allies and spent time farming the Thracian peninsula. Troy was never completely besieged, thus it maintained communications with

23430-477: The war, they did not know the way, and accidentally landed in Mysia , ruled by King Telephus , son of Heracles, who had led a contingent of Arcadians to settle there. In the battle, Achilles wounded Telephus, who had killed Thersander . Because the wound would not heal, Telephus asked an oracle, "What will happen to the wound?" The oracle responded, "he that wounded shall heal". The Achaean fleet then set sail and

23595-408: The word from a broad cultural sphere to a more specific religious grouping. However, there were many Christians and pagans alike who strongly objected to the evolution of the terminology. The influential Archbishop of Constantinople Gregory of Nazianzus , for example, took offence at imperial efforts to suppress Hellenic culture (especially concerning spoken and written Greek) and he openly criticized

23760-531: The word is related to the Greek word γέρων geron "old man" (from the PIE base *ǵerh 2 - "to grow old") via Proto-Greek *gera- "old age", also related to Mycenean Greek kera /geras/, "gift of honour". The Germanic languages borrowed the name with an initial k sound, which was probably their initial sound closest to the Latin g ( Gothic Kreks ). The first use of Graikos as equivalent to Hellenes

23925-451: The wound must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound, and Telephus was healed. Telephus then showed the Achaeans the route to Troy. Some scholars have regarded the expedition against Telephus and its resolution as a derivative reworking of elements from the main story of the Trojan War, but it has also been seen as fitting the story-pattern of the "preliminary adventure" that anticipates events and themes from

24090-464: Was Heracles' friend, and because he lit Heracles's funeral pyre when no one else would, he received Heracles' bow and arrows. He sailed with seven ships full of men to the Trojan War, where he was planning on fighting for the Achaeans. They stopped either at Chryse Island for supplies, or in Tenedos , along with the rest of the fleet. Then Philoctetes was bitten by a snake. The wound festered and had

24255-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

24420-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

24585-505: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

24750-560: Was an ancient association of Greek tribes with twelve founders which was organized to protect the great temples of Apollo in Delphi ( Phocis ) and of Demeter near Thermopylae ( Locris ). According to legend it was founded after the Trojan War, by the eponymous Amphictyon , brother of Hellen . The modern English noun Greek ( Old English Grecas or Crecas ) is derived from the Latin Graeci , which in turn originates from Ancient Greek Γραικός ( Graikós ). It seems that

24915-423: Was betrothed to an elderly human king, Peleus, son of Aeacus . All of the gods were invited to Peleus and Thetis' wedding and brought many gifts, except Eris (the goddess of discord), who was stopped at the door by Hermes , on Zeus' order. Insulted, she threw from the door a gift of her own: a golden apple ( Ancient Greek : το μήλον της έριδος ) on which was inscribed the word καλλίστῃ Kallistē ("To

25080-659: Was crowned Roman Emperor by the Pope himself, officially rejecting the Eastern Roman Empire as true Romans. According to the Frankish interpretation of events, the papacy appropriately "transferred Roman imperial authority from the Greeks to the Germans , in the name of His Greatness, Charles". From then on, a war of names about the New Rome revolved around Roman imperial rights. Unable to deny that an emperor did exist in Constantinople, they sufficed in renouncing him as

25245-587: Was extended to all peoples south of Mount Olympus , however, it still left out those of common origin living in the north. One factor contributing to this was their non-participation in the Persian Wars , which were considered a vital affair for all Hellenes; subsequent to the Persian Wars, representatives of these tribes were accepted in the Olympic Games and competed alongside other Hellenes. The fact that each of these northern peoples at this time continued to live as an ethnos , or collection of tribes, under an archaic monarchial political system – as opposed to

25410-399: Was first to leap off his ship, he was not the first to land on Trojan soil. Hector killed Protesilaus in single combat, though the Trojans conceded the beach. In the second wave of attacks, Achilles killed Cycnus , son of Poseidon . The Trojans then fled to the safety of the walls of their city. The walls served as sturdy fortifications for defence against the Greeks. The build of the walls

25575-401: Was founded after the Trojan War, by the eponymous Amphictyon , brother of Hellen. It had twelve founders and was organized to protect the great temples of Apollo in Delphi ( Phocis ) and of Demeter near Thermopylae ( Locris ). The twelve founders enumerated by Aeschines were the Aenianes or Oetaeans (Αἰνιᾶνες, Οἰταῖοι), the Boeotians (Βοιωτοί) of Thebes , the Dolopes (Δόλοπες),

25740-458: Was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the 13th or 12th century BC . By the mid-19th century AD, both the war and the city were widely seen as non-historical, but in 1868, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert , who convinced Schliemann that Troy was at what is now Hisarlık in modern-day Turkey . On the basis of excavations conducted by Schliemann and others, this claim

25905-653: Was meditating marvelous deeds, even to mingle storm and tempest over the boundless earth, and already he was hastening to make an utter end of the race of mortal men, declaring that he would destroy the lives of the demi-gods, that the children of the gods should not mate with wretched mortals, seeing their fate with their own eyes; but that the blessed gods henceforth even as aforetime should have their living and their habitations apart from men. But on those who were born of immortals and of mankind verily Zeus laid toil and sorrow upon sorrow. Zeus came to learn from either Themis or Prometheus , after Heracles had released him from

26070-584: Was nine years old, Calchas had prophesied that Troy could not again fall without his help. A number of sources credit Thetis with attempting to make Achilles immortal when he was an infant. Some of these state that she held him over fire every night to burn away his mortal parts and rubbed him with ambrosia during the day, but Peleus discovered her actions and stopped her. According to some versions of this story, Thetis had already killed several sons in this manner, and Peleus' action therefore saved his son's life. Other sources state that Thetis bathed Achilles in

26235-438: Was not a central concept in Homer's work. In some English translations of the Iliad , the Achaeans are simply called "the Greeks" throughout. There is currently no satisfactory etymology for the name Hellenes. Some scholars assert that the name of the priests of Zeus in Dodona , Selloi (Σελλοί; also Ἑλλοί Helloi ), changed to Sellanes (by analogy with Akarnanes ) and then to Hellanes and Hellenes . This theory

26400-469: Was not faithful to his wife and sister Hera , and had many relationships from which many children were born. Since Zeus believed that there were too many people populating the earth, he envisioned Momus or Themis , who was to use the Trojan War as a means to depopulate the Earth, especially of his demigod descendants. These can be supported by Hesiod's account: Now all the gods were divided through strife; for at that very time Zeus who thunders on high

26565-518: Was refused. Philoctetes stayed on Lemnos for ten years, which was a deserted island according to Sophocles' tragedy Philoctetes , but according to earlier tradition was populated by Minyans . Calchas had prophesied that the first Achaean to walk on land after stepping off a ship would be the first to die. Thus even the leading Greeks hesitated to land. Finally, Protesilaus , leader of the Phylaceans , landed first. Odysseus had tricked him, in throwing his own shield down to land on, so that while he

26730-412: Was scattered by a storm. Achilles landed in Skyros and married Deidamia. A new gathering was set again in Aulis. Telephus went to Aulis , and either pretended to be a beggar, asking Agamemnon to help heal his wound, or kidnapped Orestes and held him for ransom, demanding the wound be healed. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Odysseus reasoned that the spear that had inflicted

26895-517: Was so impressive that legend held that they had been built by Poseidon and Apollo during a year of forced service to Trojan King Laomedon . Protesilaus had killed many Trojans but was killed by Hector in most versions of the story, though others list Aeneas, Achates , or Ephorbus as his slayer. The Achaeans buried him as a god on the Thracian peninsula, across the Troäd. After Protesilaus' death, his brother, Podarces , took command of his troops. The Achaeans besieged Troy for nine years. This part of

27060-453: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

27225-450: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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